How to Be Kind to Yourself for a Healthier and Happier Life

Self-criticsim is an abrasive demon that can wear away the shine from your “being”. The simple solution is to accept who you are and be kind to yourself. OK, it’s not always that simple, but when we understand the negative effects of self-criticism, letting it go can be easier. Knowledge is power.

The Corroding Effect of Self-Criticism

Researchers Divya Kann at Vanderbilt University and Heidi Levitt at the University of Massachusetts Boston report that self-criticism is commonly a component of depression. Their study, published in the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, also found that severe self-criticism can lead to chronic anxiety and eating disorders. That’s not all. Self-criticism can damage relationships and worst of all, being constantly too hard on yourself can lead to thoughts of suicide.

Continuously obsessing about how you mishandled an uncomfortable situation, or a slip of the tongue, or even a bad decision can drive a person down into a rut of negativity. That self-criticism can end up decreasing motivation and productivity.

Does that sound like a few good reasons to stop beating up on yourself? To stop expecting perfection in work and play and relationships?

5 Steps to Self-Kindness

Negative inclinations or habits and mental health disorders can make it hard to just lighten up and be good to yourself. And you may not be able to do it alone, so be good to yourself and ask for help from a knowledgeable and compassionate therapist.
Five ways to begin being kinder to yourself:

Love yourself. First, just make a choice to try a new approach. Take small, manageable steps.Be as compassionate to yourself as you would to a friend, or a brother, sister or child you love and treasure. Be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to have, or at least begin to arrange, what you need, whether it’s more time to relax, a better job, or more opportunities for friendship, training or education.

Remove Yourself from Negative Situations
Perhaps being kind to yourself means leaving an abusive relationship, a job where you’re not appreciated, or finding a way to get unhooked from a drug or alcohol addiction. These situations often require assistance from a mental health professional. You can begin by looking into community social services or asking your primary care physician for a referral.

Incorporate Mindfulness and Meditation into Your Life
Research increasingly shows that noticing our thoughts and learning to let them go, as in meditation, helps break the cycle of negative thinking and self-criticism. Focusing on the breath is one simple way to begin. Many community organizations like libraries, or yoga centers offer classes in meditation and mindfulness.

Be Aware of Self-Criticism and Replace it with Self-Compassion
If you find yourself thinking you’re fat and ugly because you didn’t lose those 15 pounds, turn the thought to being thankful that you’re healthy and doing activities to become even healthier. If you break up with a romantic partner and begin to turn over in your mind that you’ll now be lonely forever, congratulate yourself on having the relationships you’ve had, on having current friendships, and finding ways to improve relationships, be it learning kinder ways to communicate your true feelings, or learning to have more patience with others.

We are all human, and a truth about humans is that we are all perfect and imperfect, each in our own unique way.

Focus on Something Bigger than Yourself
Volunteering with a nonprofit organization that has meaning for you helps sustain the group’s idealistic efforts and gives you a chance to turn your attention to doing good for others. It can also offer you a chance to meet many people who have learned to leave self-criticism behind and find the strength to rise up above many life challenges. Help children learn to read or do math. Many teenagers need a mentor. Hospices welcome new faces and fresh energy to comfort people confronting the end of life.

The message is, be kind to yourself, let go of expecting perfection and do whatever it is that makes you feel good and leads you to a healthier and happier life. Listen to those you love and trust, but mostly, listen to your heart.

New thinking on self-confidence turns the concept upside down. Of course, it’s important, even critical, for our physical and mental health that we believe in ourselves. And it is good to let others see our confidence in who we are and what we can do. As professional and popular wisdom goes, you have to love yourself before you can love someone else, and have them love you. But loving and caring for ourselves is not the same as self-confidence.

Author Eric Barker offers his insight that the underlying element of a healthy view of ourselves is self-compassion.

“Self-compassion encourages you to acknowledge your flaws and limitations, allowing you to look at yourself from an objective and realistic point of view,” Barker says in an article in The New York Times.

The problem with self-confidence, as Barker describes in his book Barking Up the Wrong Tree, is that it can exist on shaky ground. If you “fake it ‘til you make it,” that might work for a while, but sooner or later, the weak link in the chain is going to break.

Our society’s emphasis on productivity and success can lead someone “faking it while they’re trying to make it” to failure. Barker points to what’s known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, when you overestimate your ability in something, as a potential reason a person can stumble.

Let’s imagine how this might show up a work situation. Self-confidence may have helped you land a job where you have many of the required skills, but one of your responsibilities in the new job is analyzing financial reports. But, oops ! Your self-confidence allowed you to skip the detail that you have no training in economics or financial analysis. When that weak link surfaces, you are either going to be out of a job or will have to remedy that gap in your training.

In more personal activities, perhaps you boasted a little too self-confidently about your hiking skills and offered to lead a group of friends on a wilderness hike. If you’re not experienced enough or extremely well-prepared, you could end up in a storm on a mountainside with people’s lives in your hands.

Self-compassion in your work or personal life, in those examples, would have led you to acknowledge your true abilities and strengthen the weak links before you got into a difficult or crisis situation.

Understanding Self-Compassion

Pioneering researcher on self-compassion Kristin Neff says it emerges from the definition of compassion, which means “suffering with.” You feel empathy for others, perhaps a homeless person on the street or someone going through a difficult family situation. It’s not pity, but a gentle understanding that life has challenges and human beings are not perfect, because that’s the nature of being human.

“Self-compassion is treating yourself with the same kindness, care and concern you show a loved one,” says Neff, an associate professor at the University of Texas Austin.

Neff defines defines three major elements of self-compassion:

Self-Kindness: Recognizing that being imperfect, failing and experiencing life difficulties is inevitable, so self-compassionate people tend to be gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences, rather than getting angry when life falls short of set ideals. People cannot always be or get exactly what they want. When this reality is denied or fought against, suffering increases in the form of stress, frustration and self-criticism. When this reality is accepted with sympathy and kindness, it leads to emotional connection and a feeling of being equal, that we are all doing the best we can in life.

Common Humanity: Everyone has challenges in life and self-compassionate people don’t get stuck thinking, “Why me?” That leads to isolation. Connecting to the human family gives us strength in the long-run. We are not alone.

Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Keeping the perspective that others are suffering brings balance. Negative emotions are accepted, without being carried away by them. Mindfulness is a receptive and non-judgemental state of mind that allows compassion for self and others.

Someone who is overly confident can be attempting to hide self-doubt or a feeling of inadequacy, says Neff. Self-compassion, however, is based on a realistic view of ourselves as a human being with strengths and flaws, just like everyone else.

Test Your Self-Compassion

Neff offers a way to get an initial idea of just how compassionate you are with yourself. Try it. And remember to be kind and gentle with your findings. We are all in this thing called ‘life’ together.

Self-Compassion Brings Kindness Back Home

It’s considered admirable to be kind, loving and comforting to friends, family and even strangers. But many people consider it selfish to be kind to themselves.

If you find yourself to be often critical and impatient with yourself and intolerant of your very human flaws, maybe it’s time to add more self-compassion to your life.

Self-compassion could move that anxiety, stress or depression down a notch and make more room for optimism, joy and peace.

What is Self-Compassion?

Think about how you act and what it feels like when you are compassionate to others. You notice someone is suffering. Your heart responds and you have a desire to help. Most important, you offer understanding and kindness, not judgement or criticism.

Self-compassion is showing kindness to yourself when you’re experiencing suffering, are having a difficult time, or even when you fail, says Kristen Neff, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of the book Self-Compassion.

In your imperfections, in fragility, you understand that this is just part of being human. With that understanding, you gain self-compassion.

“Things will not always go the way you want them to,” says Neff. “You will encounter frustrations, losses will occur, you will make mistakes, bump up against your limitations, fall short of your ideals. This is the human condition.”

Self-Compassion is Not Self-Pity

When you feel self-pity, you may become immersed in your own problems and forget that others may be experiencing the same kind of challenges.

To put it simply, if you have self-pity, you think you are the only one with problems. That can cut you off from connection with others and increase your isolation.

Self-indulgence is also not self-compassion. Trying to make yourself temporarily feel better with alcohol, drugs or overeating is not self-compassion, because in the long run, it is likely to have more of a negative effect than a positive one.

Self-Compassion to Detour Depression

If you make a mistake and criticize yourself, it doesn’t get you to a better place. Neff’s view is that by trying to motivate yourself by self-criticism is a negative approach.

“Self-criticism is strongly linked to depression,” says Neff. “And you’re unable to be motivated to change if you’re depressed.”

Self-compassion can have the opposite effect. If we make a mistake and realize we’re only human, and forgive ourselves, there’s less tendency to depression and more chance of being motivated. A little self-compassion can go a long way to optimism and positive change.

Evaluating Your Own Self-Compassion

You don’t need to earn self-compassion or be better than anyone else to get it, says Neff. All human beings deserve self-compassion just for being themselves and being human.

When you look in the mirror, it might be easy to think, “I look great today” or “Wow, I’m an amazing person. I’m goin’ for it today.”

Or maybe the self-loathing voice dominates, telling you how fat, ugly or worthless you are. Maybe you just want to fade into the woodwork because you don’t think you’re worthy of other people’s attention. Perhaps you think it’s just another day to suffer through, when you’re going to do more stupid things, be embarrassed, and fail one more time, because you’re always going to be a loser.

Choosing to have good self-esteem, so you can accept genuine love and admiration from friends, family and co-workers, and live up to your potential, may not be as easy as flicking a switch. But with self-reflection and guidance from those who have made progress, it is possible to take one small step at a time and replace self-loathing with a more balanced self-love.

Journalist Anneli Rufus documents this personal change in her book, Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself. Her goal, she said, is to help others find a way out of what she believes is often needless suffering.

In an interview on WAMC Northeast Public Radio in May 2014, Rufus said people suffer daily if their view of life is from the “low self-esteem spectrum,” which can run from just being a little self-critical to a deep and profound self-loathing.

These are “… people who apologize for so many things, who cannot accept a compliment, who can’t decide even what to order in a restaurant because they’re afraid they’re going to make the wrong decision and regret it,” said Rufus.

“I see that as a tragedy, a self-loathing epidemic,” she said.

“You were not born hating yourself,” Rufus said. “Let’s go back and try to figure out when and why it started, and let’s try to dismantle it.”

She speaks from a lifetime of watching her mother, who never felt good enough. Rufus experienced her own decades of never feeling at ease in the world, but finally found ways to raise her self-esteem and be more comfortable in the routines of daily life.

Rufus’ path to increasing her self-love is also documented in the article, “Have Compassion for Yourself,” in the May 8, 2014 issue of The Atlantic. The subtitle, “How One Author Breaks the Cycle of Self-Loathing,” grew from Rufus’ personal experiences, which are the foundation of these suggestions:

Find whatever works for you that helps break the habit of negative thinking about yourself. Negative thought cycles keep you rooted in self-loathing and can cause others to feed that negative image back to you. Take a chance. Get out of your comfort zone. Join a book club. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Take a painting class. Help children learn to read. Each new skill or interest expands your comfort zone.

Stop apologizing for everything. Understand that you probably don’t really feel sorry for all the things you do. Every human being makes mistakes now and then. When you’re truthful with yourself, you’ll realize that you’re doing many things right.

Stop asking permission for everything. Look at what you’re going to do as if it’s on a movie screen. Look at the options objectively. Realize it’s not all about you, but about the choices and the results. Just do your best, in that moment. That’s all anyone can do.

Consider learning to meditate. Self-loathing is a replaying of negative thoughts. Meditation is a release from thought. Meditation can help stop the negative cycle, even just for one minute, and can be increased if you find it helpful.

Forget affirmations. Studies have found they don’t work very well for people with low self-esteem. Affirmations work better for those with medium-to-high self-esteem, because it’s saying something they already believe. A person with low self-esteem trying affirmations like “I’m so wonderful” may just get angry and frustrated.

Consider therapy. Yes, it can be confusing, time-consuming and expensive to find the right therapist, one who matches your style and your needs. However, keeping secrets about yourself is isolating. It’s important to have someone you can trust to reassure you that you are really not a bad person, and that you are not alone.

Understand that people don’t get it. Don’t take it too personally when people say, “Just snap out of it” or “Get over yourself.” People with low self-esteem hear that all the time. You’re not the first to hear it and you won’t be the last.

Realize that people with very high self-esteem have their own issues. They may not listen to others, may not communicate well or may not be able to understand another’s perspective. They may be dictatorial. Aim for a middle ground of balanced self-appreciation and self-respect.

Listen for and appreciate humor. Laughter can help you get out of yourself and connect with others.

Be thankful for what low self-esteem has taught you. You may tend to respect and appreciate others. That can make you a more compassionate person. On the spirituality scale, compassion is a quality to honor in yourself. Truly honoring yourself for your good qualities can – you guessed it – raise your self-esteem. That puts you farther along the path to a balanced and sincere self-love.

Overall, Rufus said it’s important to learn what you can from reflecting on when your self-esteem began to go downhill, then begin to shift that current into a more positive direction.

“I’m not looking in the mirror, or complimenting myself, or thinking about myself very much. I’ll walk through the day just thinking, ‘Oh, there’s a crow,’ and I’m so grateful for that,” said Rufus. “For me, I’m in a state of acceptance, and that is a huge, huge difference.”

If you are suffering from depression, poor self-esteem, or anxiety, Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) can help you learn how to feel good.

Albert Ellis developed rational emotive therapy in the 1950’s.
RET is one of the many cognitive behavioral treatment techniques currently used in the mental health field. This therapy focuses on helping the client change those events that can be changed, to gracefully tolerate those that cannot, and to develop the capacity to discriminate between the two. It was based on the idea that psychological problems are caused by self-defeating thoughts, such as “I must be loved or approved by everyone” and “If I don’t find the perfect solution to this problem, a catastrophe will result”. Once such thoughts are changed, emotional and behavioral changes will follow. My task is to help you recognize the illogical and self-destructive thinking processes and to help you replace them with healthier, positive ones.

Some of the 60,000 thoughts we have per day may cause negative emotions that if untreated, can lead to depression, poor self-esteem, anxiety, and other insecurities that may be self-destructive. RET is a therapy that empowers you to change your thinking and to have a more profound understanding of how your thinking affects the way you feel. RET enables you to modify your patterns of thought by increasing awareness and training your mind, empowering you to minimize emotional distress and promote well-being.

How?

RET helps you identify the emotional and practical problems in your life, and helps delineate the difference between the two. You will be able to minimize emotional disturbances, obtain self-actualization, and experience an improvement in your quality of life.

For instance, Susan is a very sucessful lawyer, a great mother to two young children and an outstanding wife. The law firm where she was employed downsized, and as a result her case load decreased as did her salary. For the past month, Susan was waking up at 4 a.m., she was eating uncrontollably and cried almost on a daily basis. Some of Susan’s statements in treatment were as follows:

“I am very scared that I will lose my home; I feel like a bad wife and mother; I just feel like I am going to lose my mind!”

Emotional problem: Susan is upsetting herself about her current setbacks, why not continue doing your best at your firm without generalizing that EVERYTHING is a failure in your life. She fails to remember that she plays a crucial role in her family, and is has been able to carry a balanced life with a successful career and a stable home.

Practical problem: This would involve the success of her business. How can she increase her salary, what are other work related options?

Many people may believe that the practical problem causes the emotional problem, yet it is our thoughts and the perceptions about that event that cause the emotional response.

ABC model

Activating event (activating experience)

Our perception of an unfortunate environmental occurrence.

ie. Susan’s decrease in her case load and decrease in salary due to changes in her company.

Belief system

Our irrational and rational beliefs about the event. These are our automatic thoughts. Irrational beliefs are the ones that we want to address with RET. These thoughts typically consist of “must’s/should’s.” They are also referred to as “thinking errors.”

Three main irrational beliefs are:

“I must be an outstanding component or I am worthless.”

“Others must treat me considerably, or they are absolutely rotten.”

“The world will give me happiness, or I will die.”

In Susan’s case her irrational beliefs will consist of “I must make ,000 a year, or I am a failure”

Consequences: Emotional and Behavioral

These are the negative emotions such as depression, panic, rage that stems from our beliefs.

Ellis adds the D and the E, D stands for disputation in which you learn how to challenge and debate your irrational thinking. When you are successful at accomplishing this task, then you can move on to E. At this point, you should ultimately enjoy the positive psychological effects of rational beliefs.

I believe empowerement is the key to therapy. Empowerment is the ability to be adaptive and flexible with a positive attitude and good problem-solving skills that enables us to meet our needs over the course of our lives. We all face life challenge. The key is to modify our thinking patterns and find a way to maintain positive self-esteem over the course of our lives, regardless of what kinds of challenges face us.